Mr Abbott said the previous Labor government rather than the Coalition government is to blame for the cut to hospital funding.
"There was a national partnership agreement on beds which the Labor Party hadn’t funded and we haven’t decided to renew it. But this is actually a Labor cut – it’s not a Coalition cut," Mr Abbott told ABC Radio this morning.
The comments contradict Mr Abbott's remarks yesterday when he told reporters: “We’re not talking about next week or next month or even next year; we are talking about changes in three years' time”.
Budget documents confirm the government plans to save $1.8bn over the next four years by witholding Commonwealth funding for hospital beds from the next financial year.
“The government will save $1.8bn over four years from 2014-15 by ceasing the funding guarantees under the national health reform agreement 2011 and revising commonwealth hospital funding arrangements from July 2017," budget documents state.
State premiers say the cuts remove funding needed for 1,200 hospital beds and they have no capacity to fill the gap.
Premiers and chief ministers said billions in cuts to health and education funding will have an immediate impact on services.
At a meeting in Sydney on Sunday they rejected the cuts as "completely unacceptable" and claimed hundreds of hospital beds would have to be closed across the country from the beginning of July.
A call by premiers and chief ministers for an emergency meeting with the Prime Minister has been rejected by the federal government.
"There is no need for an urgent meeting, what we have done in the period four years from now is to put our funding growth trajectory for health and education on a more sustainable footing," Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told the ABC.
